Romanian telecom regulator head wants country’s major cities 5G covered within 5 years

Adrian Diţă, the president of the Romanian telecom authority ANCOM, said he would like all of the country’s major cities to benefit from 5G coverage within five years. ANCOM opened on June 26 the public consultation on the auction granting the rights to use new radio frequencies, including in the 5G standard. “The bands that are under consultation contribute to ensuring the frequency resources needed for the efficient development of communication services in the context of the increased mobile data consumption but also to the implementation of new generation technologies, also known as 5G or [International Mobile Telecommunication] IMT 2020,” ANCOM said. The public authorities will organize a competitive selection procedure for new frequency bands, harmonized at a European level, for mobile broadband terrestrial communication systems of 694-790 MHz and 1452-1492 MHz. It will also set up a bid for frequency sub-bands that were not allotted in previous competitive procedures. These are 791-796 MHz/832-837 MHz, 2530-2570 MHz/2650-2690 MHz, 3410-3420 MHz/3510-3520 MHz and 3450-3465 MHz/3550-3565 MHz bands, ANCOM said. “I would like very much that in at most 5 years all of Romania’s major cities enjoy 5G coverage and ANCOM is taking today the first step towards this new industrial revolution and the digital transformation of the economy and of Romanian society. We could again be among the first EU countries undertaking such an auction, certainly the first in the eastern region, after we were the authors of an Eastern European premiere in the area of frequency bids, in 2012,” the ANCOM president said. Romania’s first 5G network to become operational in 2020 editor@romania-insider.com